Sorry Tony Abbott, the Nationals are Right Again

Whilst the Carbon Tax is as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool, there is no doubt whatsoever that the bipartisan support for the 20% Renewable Energy Target (RET) is the real culprit in allowing the price of power to skyrocket. The RET is illogical and economically reckless. Why Abbott and his shadow cabinet think its worth staying committed to the 20% RET is just mind boggling.

Below are the statistics on the cost of power generation in 2011 from the Australian Government’s own Productivity Commission:

Coal fired power station $79 per Mw/h (megawatt/hour)
Gas fired power station $97 per Mw/h – or 1.2 times the cost of coal power
Wind power $150-214 per Mw/h – or nearly 3 times the cost of coal power
Solar power $400-473 per Mw/h – or nearly 6 times the cost of coal power

You don’t need to be Einstein to work out that the high cost of Wind and Solar is the reason the public are being screwed with high electricity prices. The Carbon Tax just adds further pain.

The Liberals would be wise to heed again the warning from their coalition partners, the Nationals. If it wasn’t for National Senators Joyce and Boswell, Australia would have an ETS, Rudd would still be PM and Malcolm Turnbull would still be opposition leader.

Queensland senator Ron Boswell told a meeting of the Coalition joint partyroom in Canberra that the RET would have a bigger impact on the aluminium industry than the carbon tax, and the Coalition had to acknowledge higher electricity costs associated with the target were a serious problem for manufacturing.

Further, “renewables” are a con:

The solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluoroethane (C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). These three potent greenhouse gases, used by solar cell fabricators, make carbon dioxide (CO2) seem harmless.
The stark reality is that Solar is surprisingly inefficient when it’s dark and cloudy. Even these new Solar Thermal plants can only supply enough heat stored in the form of steam to allow power generation after dark for only an hour. Sure we use less energy at night then we do during the day, but when the Sun goes down do you really want the alternative to be infrequent wind energy to power the TV, refrigerator and the heater?
Each and every wind turbine has a magnet made of a metal called neodymium. There are 2,500 Kg of it in each of the behemoths. The mining and refining of neodymium is so dirty and toxic - involving repeated boiling in acid, with radioactive thorium as a waste product - that only one country does it - China. This year it flexed its trade muscles and briefly stopped exporting neodymium from its inner Mongolian mines. Forget Middle East oil, how’s that for dangerous reliance on a volatile foreign supply.
Wind Turbines kill a massive amount of birds and bats. They also cause ill health effects on humans.
Wind Turbines blight the landscape.
Even the Productivity Commission spells out that mandated solar and wind won't knock out coal-fired power generation. All it does is displace cleaner but more expensive gas-fired generation, undercutting the fuel switch that has the most potential to cut Australia's emissions and needlessly raising electricity bills.
Wind power is intermittent and inefficient. Back in 1919 a smart German physicist named Albert Betz figured out that the most you can possibly get out of Wind Turbine is around 59% of the power in the wind. This is an unassailable bit of physics. Stop whining about it. I'm not going to prove it here but it is not hard to at least understand why we can never convert 100% of the wind's power. In other words, a perfect best-possible Wind Turbine would be able to convert almost 59% of the power in the wind into mechanical rotating power. But we can't achieve perfection. A given Wind Turbine has a "design point" that generally defines its peak efficiency at the wind speed for which the system is designed. At wind speeds above and below the design speed the efficiency is the same or less - maybe much less. If a turbine's best efficiency is 40% at a wind velocity of 10 meters per second it will be 40% only at that wind speed. At all other wind speeds it will be something worse. That wind turbine will generally operate at lower than its best efficiency, because wind speeds are never constant or average. When there is no wind, a turbine’s efficiency is zero.

Yes the Carbon Tax must be scrapped, but if Abbott is fair dinkum he needs to also scrap the 20% RET. One only needs to witness the financial disaster renewables have been in Germany, Spain, UK and the USA.

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Correction: The cost stats for wind and solar have been corrected. I originally overstated each figure by an extra zero. Regardless, wind and solar are still 3-6 times more expensive than coal fired power.

The advantage of coal is even greater in comparison to renewable energy. IEA and European Commission studies show that onshore wind costs between US$50 and US$156 per MWh and solar photovoltaics between US$226 to US$2031. In certain locations hydro resources can produce electricity at a cost comparable to coal, however estimates vary greatly according to geographic conditions and the final price can be as high as US$240 and US$262 per MWh. In comparison, electricity from coal costs between US$56 to US$82 per MWh.

Comments

And I forgot to mention - wholesale power prices are actually going DOWN: http://ecogeneration.com.au/news/solar_and_energy_efficiency_reducing_power_prices_raa/075951/. So why are OUR prices going up? How about asking the power companies that?

Posted by: Hlis.wordpress.com | 26 June 2012 at 10:36 AM

Actually, prices are going up due to the desperate need for investment in a seriously antique infrastructure. Prices have remained artificially low due to an ongoing lack of investment so now we, the consumer, have to wear the pain of lack of foresight as things are brought up to scratch in a hurry. http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2012/06/an-archaic-powe.php

It's all very well to look at the fossil fuel costs right now, but such figures don't take into account their health effects, their gradual overtaking of agricultural land (how will we eat if we don't grow food? On the other hand, we can generate power without digging up the place), and the absolute fact they THEY WILL RUN OUT. Maybe not in your generation or mine, but they will. How short-sighted to we have to be to permit that to happen when it's so easy to change?

Posted by: Hlis.wordpress.com | 26 June 2012 at 10:33 AM